Let us now sum up the results. Sovereignty, as conceived by
the Romans, was inherent in the community of burgesses; but the
burgess-body was never entitled to act alone, and was only entitled
to co-operate in action, when there was to be a departure from
existing rules. By its side stood the assembly of the elders of
the community appointed for life, virtually a college of magistrates
with regal power, called in the event of a vacancy in the royal
office to administer it by means of their own members until it
should be once more definitively filled, and entitled to overturn
the illegal decrees of the community.

The royal power itself was,
as Sallust says, at once absolute and limited by the laws (-imperium
legitimum-); absolute, in so far as the king's command, whether
righteous or not, must in the first instance be unconditionally
obeyed; limited, in so far as a command contravening established
usage and not sanctioned by the true sovereign--the people--carried
no permanent legal consequences. The oldest constitution of Rome
was thus in some measure constitutional monarchy inverted. In
that form of government the king is regarded as the possessor and
vehicle of the plenary power of the state, and accordingly acts of
grace, for example, proceed solely from him, while the administration
of the state belongs to the representatives of the people and to
the executive responsible to them.

In the Roman constitution the
community of the people exercised very much the same functions as
belong to the king in England: the right of pardon, which in England
is a prerogative of the crown, was in Rome a prerogative of the
community; while all government was vested in the president of the
state.